Night

I decided to watch M. Night Shyamalan's latest work entitled "Devil". I decided to watch this with the thought that this is Night's attempt at redemption. That he's trying to redeem himself after his "failure" with The Last Airbender. And truth be told, I really wanted him to successfully achieve that. Maybe we shouldn't have such high expectations before watching a movie. The movie was what it said it was, a horror thriller, well more thriller I think. There were those scary-jumping-out-of-your-seats moments and those scream-your-heart-out moments. Okay, let's be fair. It IS a horror-thriller. So jumping and screaming are logical. Can't disagree with that. What saddened me was that this wasn't what Night is all about. He didn't deliver the typical Japanese crawling ghosts or the pale long-haired evil spirits either. His ghosts, or evil, were unseen. Sometimes, they didn't actually have a visually visible physical form. Night's fear formula was the fear inside ourselves. That is the thing that is most frightening. In his previous movies namely The Sixth Sense and Signs, we couldn't actually see the ghost crawling towards us but they appear is shadows, passing by too quickly in flashes. So the audiences are only left with their own fears and imagination to scare the bejeezus out of themselves. And I miss that, even in "Devil". Night's movies used to tell us that the greatest thing to fear is within ourselves, not the unknown entity that we conveniently call ghosts or evil. Night has come a long way in making movies but somewhere along the way, his trademark decided to take a different route. Night, where art thou?